 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
“One Man to One Woman” Outraged 19th Century Mormons By Will Bagley Excerpted from "Gay Unions Accepted as Routine in Cultures for Centuries" (The Salt Lake Tribune, 29 February 2004, p. B2). Marriage, says BYU law professor Richard G. Wilkins, "has always been about one sexual relationship—the union of a man and a woman." Of course, this would be news for Brigham Young, who said "I do" to some 56 women. Consider the furor and outrage Mormon polygamy evoked in the 19th century. The laws sanctifying the one-man, one-woman model of marriage had forced millions upon millions of women "to become a prey to man's lust and a consuming sacrifice upon the altar of illicit passion," the Deseret Evening News thundered in December 1885. "One man to one woman only," the newspaper proclaimed, was "the exception in Christendom as well as heathendom" and was "one impracticable standard." The News argued that polygamous marriage "prevails all over the world, and those who pretend to the contrary are very simple or very untruthful." That's a debate point, even though it appeared in the pages of what the Salt lake Tribune used to call "the font of truth," but marriage has been a flexible institution throughout history. |
www.affirmation.org